In the prior art, to obtain a configuration of a serving cell, user equipment (User Equipment, UE for short) usually needs to detect transmission information sent by a base station. Generally, the UE determines the configuration of the serving cell by blindly detecting a reference signal that is sent by the base station and corresponding to a carrier type of the serving cell, or the UE may need to detect transmission information by means of blind detection, both causing a problem that efficiency of determining the configuration of the serving cell by the UE is low.